


Two Bottles, A Canvas, and a Call

by mercutiglo



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Arguments, I dont really know what to tag this, M/M, Phone Calls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 21:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3826210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercutiglo/pseuds/mercutiglo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don't let Cecil have wine and his phone while Carlos is still in the Desert Otherworld (written before Voicemail and after WE MUST GIVE PRAISE) (Actually kind of sad and also I fixed my formatting yay! Along with all the grammatical mistakes, I'm so sorry.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Bottles, A Canvas, and a Call

He sat down on the couch in the middle of the living room and stared. Not at anything in particular, because then he usually ended up looking at Secret Police cameras, just generally nothing. Carlos hadn't called him recently, he had said he was really busy with science things in the desert otherworld. But Carlos' Twitter suggested that he was having a lot more fun with his new friends than he was telling Cecil. And Cecil hadn't taken a picture of his painting to see see Carlos before it had been burned. And although he had told his listeners - and himself - that he could just replace it, the colors would never be as perfect, none of it would be as well proportionef, it would basically just never happen again. Just like seeing Carlos in person. Cecil turned around to look at the easel he had set up in in corner, sitting with a blank canvas prepared, waiting patiently for his next artistic effort.

  
He got up to go into into kitchen to grab a drink. He saw a bottle of merlot sitting around, so he found a bottle opener and a glass and walked back towards his easel.

  
After three glasses and half an hour of just sitting on the floor, he finally opened up his box of paints and stood up. He grabbed a dark green to start working on the background. After he spent about half an hour trying to figure out how the background looked, he decided it would be a good idea to call Carlos, considering Carlos hadn’t taken it upon himself to call him in about two weeks. He knew time was a weird thing. Very relative. Maybe Carlos had just called him five minutes ago. Or maybe it had been two years. He hoped he was calling Carlos at a reasonable time, probably the evening. While it rang, he went back into the kitchen to try and find more wine for after he finished the first one, although he figured the Faceless Old Woman probably hid the rest of it for his announcing that she was wanted by the Secret Police. After seven rings and the loss of almost all of his hope, Carlos finally picked up. “Cecil! Hey! I was just thinking about calling you!” Cecil leaned against the fridge and slid to the ground, letting out a giant sigh of relief. At least Carlos still thought about him. “Cecil? Are you there? Cecil are you okay?”

  
Cecil let out another sigh, this one more shaky than the last. “I’m here enough. Let’s not argue about this again. But sure? I think? Not really? I don’t know how I am right now, Carlos. All sorts of shit has been going down recently and I just really wish you were here to help me figure out what the hell has been happening to me.” A pause from the other side of the phone made Cecil realize how needy he was sounding. It hadn’t sounded like he really cared about Carlos’ physical presence, just his science. The same science he was using to try and get back to his Cecil.

  
“Cecil, you know that I’m not trying to stay here. I really am trying to get back to you. I’ve been working really hard to try and figure it all out.” Carlos sounded hurt, but Cecil had found and opened a bottle of Piedmont to further impede his judgement and screw up what he had planned on saying.

  
“Are you though, Carlos? Are you really, truly, actually trying to figure out how to see me again? Because your Twitter suggests that you’re spending an awful lot of time with Doug and Elisha in your recently built hot yoga studio. And doing science with them all the time. Do you realize that? Your Twitter always used to be filled with tweets about how much you missed me, or cute cat videos you wanted me to watch. You know when the last time you tweeted me was? Three MONTHS ago, Carlos. I understand time moves a bit differently between us, but even you should realize that that is a long ass time. And it isn’t just Twitter, it’s Facebook and Tumblr and Instagram and Skype as well. It’s like you’ve forgotten about me completely for all your new friends. I’m your boyfriend, Carlos. I just want to see you and feel you hug me really close when we watch movies and watch as you try desperately and fail at cooking and nearly set the apartment on fire again and then after eating take out ending up snuggling in bed while falling asleep and being able to smell you because you smell like aftershave and the laboratory and somehow cinnamon. I love you too much to let you just drift away from me like this." By this point, Cecil's become a mess, sobbing into the phone, clutching the wine bottle with both hands, his phone on speaker in his lap.

  
There's a pause for a moment as Carlos tries to figure out how to calm his drunken boyfriend. "Cecil, honey, let me talk a little bit, okay? Yes, I have been spending some time with Doug and Elisha. Yes, I post about the things they drag me to go do. But the entire time I'm doing whatever they're making me do, I'm thinking about how much more fun it would be if it was just the two of us. On a date. Without Doug or Elisha. And the reason I stopped posting so much about you was because it was painful for me to keep posting about you and not have you here, not because I forgot about you, silly. I miss you too, and I miss every single thing you mentioned as well. But I think I’m getting close to figuring it out sweetie. And I’m sorry I haven’t called you either. It just hurts and then I get really distracted while I’m trying to figure out how we can be together again. Please don’t think I hate you or don’t love you anymore Cecil. Because I do love you. That’s why I want to figure out how you can come and see me and I’m very very close.” Carlos didn’t hear anything for a while. “Cecil?”

  
Cecil had one question that had been literally eating at his left pinky finger after Carlos’ last phone calls. “You keep trying to figure out how to get me there, Carlos. But I need to stay here. Why do you keep trying to get me to leave to come there? Don’t you want to come home, Carlos?”

  
Carlos sat for a second, in a sort of stunned silence. Was that what had happened? Had he spent so much time here that he no longer wanted to go back to his home, his Night Vale? Even if Cecil came to visit for vacation, how exactly would he be able to get back? Or was that the plan? “Cecil, I don’t know. Maybe I just… I do want to come home, Cecil. But I don’t know how. And bringing you here would be the closest I would be able to get to home without being there for real.“

 

“Do you realize that if I come there, you don’t know how to get me back to Night Vale? I can’t get back yet, as far as you know, and I can’t not come back. I know that there's also the whole thing with Station Management feeding my applications to the thirty eyed bats they supposedly keep, but Carlos if I can't get back, I can't come in the first place. But either way, even if you figure out how to get back, why not just come home to me, Carlos?"

  
"Because I'm not done here yet, Cecil. There are all sorts of mysterious things I haven't figured out here yet."

  
"So you're saying Night Vale isn't mysterious? Do you think you understand everything about this place? Because from what I've heard, wherever you are now, it sounds boring. It sounds like nothing ever happens."

  
"Cecil, I never said-"

  
"Am I not interesting or mysterious anymore, Carlos?"

  
“Cecil, you know-”

“No, Carlos, I don’t know. I don’t think I know anything I ever thought I knew about you. I give up. I’ll call you tomorrow or something. Who knows, MAYBE you’ll find time to talk to your boyfriend. Bye Carlos.”

  
“Cecil! Cecil, I don’t -” Cecil hung-up the phone in the middle of Carlos’ sentence. He sank to the ground, throwing his phone with his picture of him and Carlos, giving into the tears that had dried up only to flow again with fuller force. He didn’t even have the patience to listen to his boyfriend.

**Author's Note:**

> Im sorry the ending was shit I just wanted to get this thing posted. If people really like it and want me to change it, that might be a possibility. So, yeah! Hope you liked my little angsty fic!  
> (Looking back at this it's actually really kind of a lot sadder than I intended whoops.)


End file.
